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Fifty years ago Thursday, Lowell's greatest football team wrapped up a perfect season

By David Pevear, Special to The Sun

Updated:
11/22/2017 12:37:45 PM EST

LOWELL -- The great coach himself was quoted as saying it was his best team. And even now, 41 years after Ray Riddick's death, who dares question the great coach?

The late Tommy Whalen, quarterback of the 1967 team that Riddick called his best, once reasoned obediently, "Got to go by what Coach Riddick said."

Yes sir. Got to go by what Coach Riddick said.

And on a muddy Thanksgiving Day 50 years ago, Coach Riddick's lasting words placed his 1967 team atop Lowell High football's hierarchy.

The great coach must have been feeling especially mighty. His Red Raiders had just smothered Lawrence, 22-0, before a crowd of 12,000 at Cawley Stadium to wrap up a 9-0 season in which they never trailed and were never threatened.

"Overall, this is the best Lowell High football team I've ever coached," said Riddick, his seventh undefeated season in the books.

To be fair, Riddick had not yet coached his final undefeated team in 1970. But when George Bossi was being inducted into the Lowell High Hall of Fame in 2002, the legendary LHS wrestling coach who had also been on Riddick's football staff, mentioned the 1967 team as Lowell's greatest. A voice in the audience yelled out, "What about 1970?" Bossi, without missing a beat, roared, "'67 was better" and motored on uninterrupted with his speech.

There is a smorgasbord of great Riddick teams over which to debate.

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A poll on the Lowell High School Athletic Hall of Fame's website seeks votes for LHS' greatest football team. At last check, the 1954 team -- the third of three straight undefeated teams -- was in the lead.

But recent polling aside, the 1967 team is still generally considered the powerhouse against which all other Lowell powerhouses are measured. Eight members of the 1967 team are in the Lowell High Hall of Fame: Whalen, Rodney 'Rocket' Redman (averaged 10.

Green, a co-captain and end/linebacker who led the 1967 team with five touchdown catches and five interceptions, says he would expect each player from Riddick's many other powerhouses to believe he played on the great coach's best-ever team. That spirit is at the heart of the high standards those teams set.

"But I always tell them, 'I'm sure you had a wonderful team. But did Coach Riddick ever call your team his greatest?'" says Green in a mischievous tone. "The quote was right there in the Lowell Sun (50 years ago). And Coach Riddick never lied to us.

Legendary Lowell High football coach Ray Riddick holds the blocking sled for a player in an undated photo from a Lowell practice. SUN FILE PHOTO

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The 1967 team came together at a perfect time, says Green. Lowell High football was still the biggest show in town. Most games were played on Sundays before crowds of 10,000 or more. Nobody cared yet about the Patriots. Lowell boys grew up dreaming only of suiting up for Coach Riddick, who would compile a 182-75-14 record over 29 seasons at Lowell High. (Riddick's final season was 1975. He died in 1976 at age 58.)

"As kids, we would go watch our (Lowell High) predecessors -- the Brent Nelsons, Billy Kouloherases, Walter Nelsons..." says Green. "We were brought up on it. I remember when I was in the eighth grade, being at the Thanksgiving Day game at Cawley Stadium. After Lowell won, I asked my father if I could just go walk on the field. There was an aura about who had played on that field."

Four years later, Green would walk off that field as part of an undefeated team that Riddick was calling his best ever. A dream come true.

"Just a wonderful time," says Green. "As teammates we genuinely liked each other. We were friends. And we still are. "

Time, sadly, has thinned the ranks of the Boys of '67.

Co-captain Krysiak, who rushed for 330 yards and scored five touchdowns and was the fourth-leading tackler on defense, died of cancer in 2011 at age 61.

Whalen, who passed for eight touchdowns and ran for eight more, died in 2014 at age 65, having since 1976 been paralyzed from the chest down following a swimming accident.

Ray Riddick Jr., a sophomore long-snapper and backup center and defensive end on the '67 team (who would captain his dad's 1969 team), died in 2015 at age 63 after a brief illness.

Bob Tara, a starting guard, died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 58. Jimmy Caster, a starting defensive tackle, is also deceased.

But the close team of which they were all a vital part never grows old.

"The stories keep getting better," says Green.

Facts are facts

Impressive facts back up most of those stories.

Consider that only one opponent celebrated anything at all on Lowell's watch in 1967. In Lowell's fourth game, Haverhill whooped it up after scoring a second-quarter touchdown at Haverhill Stadium.

The only other score Lowell allowed that season was a fourth-quarter scrub-time touchdown during a 38-6 victory over Beverly. What passed for thrillers for Lowell in 1967 were 20-0 victories at Peabody in the season-opener and over highly-ranked Salem a few weeks later.

"No wonder coach Riddick is telling people this might be the best club he's ever had at Lowell," said Salem coach Andy Konovalchik after his team absorbed a frightening physical pounding not necessarily reflected on the scoreboard.

The story of the 1967 Lowell High football team features no fairytale comebacks or memorable Games of the Century. It is a story of total domination -- and of one definitive quote from a coach not to be questioned.

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